


Position Papers

by imparfait



Category: South Park
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Colorado, M/M, Politics, Washington D.C.
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-11
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-21 19:52:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8258435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imparfait/pseuds/imparfait
Summary: Deleted scenes, bonus ficlets, and the department of backstory for The Colorado Second.





	1. History

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Colorado 2nd](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3255992) by [imparfait](https://archiveofourown.org/users/imparfait/pseuds/imparfait). 



Spring blooms with a blizzard.  It’s not unusual, but Kyle is tired of being stuck inside for days on end.  He can almost taste summer, the end of Freshman year, the beginning of a new set of adventures.  Next year, they’ll have cars and licenses and freedom, but this year it’s going to be all summertime picnics and camping out in Stan’s back yard, too full from gorging on hamburgers to do much else than roll over and pass out. **  
**

It’s a snow-covered Saturday, still morning, and Kyle sits on the couch impatiently waiting for Stan to call him.  He could, he supposes, trudge through the snow and wake him up.  He likes doing that, secretly revels in the way Stan looks when he wakes up, face softened by sleep and eyelids heavy.  That’s why he doesn’t anymore, why he waits for Stan to call him: because Kyle can’t stand to be there, crouched next to Stan’s bed, shaking him awake.  

How much he wants to close the distance between them and kiss him aches right down to his bones every day.  It’s worse when he’s staring down at Stan still asleep, lips parted and cheeks flushed from being burrowed under a too-warm blanket.  But he can’t, because that would be the ultimate end of everything.  No more snowball fights, no more camping out, no midday dunks in Stark’s Pond to cool off in the dead heat of July.  Just nothing, stretching out across the scorched-earth future of Kyle’s own personal apocalypse.

By the time Stan calls him it’s early afternoon, long after he camped out in front of the television with Ike, both of them silently crunching away on cereal and then, later, a bag of Smartfood pilfered from on top of the fridge.  Ike rolls his eyes when Kyle answers on the first ring, then gives him a lecture about how Saturdays are supposed to be for family.  Kyle thinks it’s rich coming from him, since they _both_ skipped Torah services this morning in favor of lounging on the couch.

He doesn’t bother to get dressed, just stuffs his feet into his boots and grabs his coat off the rack by the door.  Ike tries to guilt him one more time and when that fails he makes fun of Kyle for his stripey pajama bottoms, which is Kyle’s cue to flip him off and slam the door behind him.

The snow is brutal, falling fast and heavy, whipped across his face by the wind.  Kyle’s shivering.  His pants are soaked through to the knee by the time he makes it across the two front yards and up the Marsh’s front steps.  He tugs his hat down against the wind futilely and bangs his fist against the freezing wood three times before Stan yanks it open and grabs onto Kyle’s shoulders when he pitches forward, almost tumbling into the house.

It’s warm inside Stan’s living room.  The TV is on, PlayStation pulled out away from the wall as far as the cord could stretch, the contents of Stan’s box of PS2 games littering the floor in a messy pile.  There’s a method, maybe, hidden somewhere in the stacks.  Kyle can see the discard pile, the laundry list of games that they’ve already beaten a thousand times and the three or four triple A’s that he can’t stand to play at all.  A little smile touches the corner of his lips as he kneels down to dig through the boxes.  

Stan gets them cans of pop while Kyle shuffles through what’s left: the gauntlet of sports games; Virtua Fighter 4, which he only kind of hates; the terrible Mortal Kombat where he can’t be Liu Kang, which he takes as a personal slight from Midway; a Buffy the Vampire Slayer game.  He pauses at that, thinks about the fifteen ways he could poke fun at Stan’s video game choices, but he doesn’t say anything when Stan walks back into the room, carefully balancing two Cokes and a bowl full of Doritos.

He weighs two games in his hands, not really caring what they wind up playing, just that eventually they’ll wind up sliding together to the middle of the couch, strung out on sugar and thumbs hurting.  It’s Kyle’s favorite part of Saturday afternoons, the thing he won’t ever give up even if how much he wants to rub the ache out of Stan’s thumbs, kiss the skin between his fingers, nuzzle his face against the underside of Stan’s jaw hurts so bad he can sometimes feel it for real, buzzing against his skin like a bee sting.

He picks Mortal Kombat in the end.  Stan likes it and sometimes they fight over who gets to be Raiden, all play-punches and grappling, but getting that close to Stan is intoxicating in this sick way that Kyle hopes he’ll get over one day.

They don’t fight that Saturday.  Kyle acquiesces to Stan’s whining _please let me be Raiden, come on Kyle, please_.  The tight, pinched sound of Stan’s voice makes Kyle embarrassingly hard in his pajama bottoms.  Thin cotton hides nothing so he curls up into himself, controller balanced on his knees, and opts for Kitana in silence.

Stan wins and wins again because Kyle is shaking, just a little tremble that starts in his spine and radiates out.  He tries to blame it on the cold, the way the wind-whipped snow bit into his bones, but he’s warm now, camped out on the couch in Stan’s living room, his right ankle pressed against Stan’s thigh.  He wonders if that isn’t what’s doing it, the tiny place where they’re touching, and he shifts away to see while Stan greedily picks Raiden again.

Lately he’s been feeling like he’s an experiment in willpower.  He’s got cabin fever from the long winter and the urge to just reach out and grab Stan by the shoulders, pour his frustration into Stan through a kiss is overwhelming on the best days.  Today it’s unbearable.  He would’ve been better off spending the day at home binge watching Law and Order and fighting over the popcorn with Ike.

He picks Sub-Zero and grits his teeth, willing himself to kick the ever-loving shit out of Stan because it’s entirely his fault that they’re in this mess, with his ocean-blue eyes and his staticky hair, how he’s already six feet tall and still growing.  He wants to rip out Stan’s pixelated spine, overcome with the thought that if the line of his jaw wasn’t so sharp, if he wasn’t a fifteen-year-old wall of muscle and dark hair, maybe Kyle wouldn’t want him so bad, think about touching him all the time, beat off to the idea of Stan’s dick in his mouth, heavy on his tongue.

He wins and spikes his controller down onto the cushion next to him, an almost primal shout of victory pulling itself out of his throat.  He turns suddenly, triumphant grin plastered across his face, and he can’t stop himself.  It’s one of those moments where he sees it happening before it really does but he can’t make his body stop.  He grabs Stan by the ears and pulls him in, slams their mouths together in a kiss that should never happen but does anyway.

Stan’s stock still against him, not even a muscle twitch, and Kyle wrenches himself away as soon as his traitorous body will let him.  He shuffles backwards until he bumps his back against the arm of the couch, keeps his knees up like they’re a shield, and stares, horrified, as Stan slowly lifts his fingers to his lips.  They’re both frozen where they sit, staring at each other.  Kyle doesn’t want to be the first one to blink but he looks away, bites the inside of his cheek, and wills himself not to cry.  

“Why did I do that?” he asks aloud, not to Stan but to the universe at large, his voice pitched up and panicky.

“Do it again,” Stan says, quiet and calm.  Kyle whips his head up sharply, watching dumbstruck as Stan drops his hand from his mouth and shuffles across the cushions towards Kyle.

“What?” Kyle’s panic is receding, being replaced and remade into something else.  He isn’t sure he heard right.  

“Do it again,” Stan repeats, his eyes lit up like a parched man stumbling on a well in the desert.

In the moment before their lips crash together again, Kyle thinks about statistics and probabilities, how this shouldn’t be happening.  He’s run the numbers on it in his head a thousand times.  The thoughts scatter when Stan’s lips, chapped and Dorito flavored, bump against his.  He allows the universe to give him this, one precious gift, here on the first day of spring.


	2. Caucus

“I fucking hate caucuses.”

This wasn’t the first time Stan heard all about Kyle’s feelings for the electoral process but he hoped–maybe in vain, but he still hoped–that Kyle getting selected as a voting delegate would temper his mood.

It hadn’t, and over late-night burgers, sitting at the bar in TGI Friday’s, Stan was certain he was going to hear all about it again.  He mostly wanted to go home. He agreed with Kyle on that point in his seven-point list of Why The Caucus System Is Awful: it runs too late.  Stan liked voting.  It took all of seven seconds and he usually did it in the bathroom.

“I thought you had a good night,” he offered.

“I did,” Kyle said.  “That doesn’t make the system any less godawful, Stan.”

He’s heard it all before: only the fervent come out, shift workers are disenfranchised, the time commitment is outrageous.  He could probably recite Kyle’s rant by rote, he heard it half a dozen times in the last three weeks alone.

Stan took a bite of a french fry and considered.  He kind of liked it when Kyle got all fired up about something.  His cheeks got red, his eyes lit up.  The way he squared his shoulders like he was running into battle kind of got Stan a little hot.  He at least has good memories from the caucuses.  They fucked in the back of Stan’s CRV after the caucus in ‘08; in 2012, they had a party afterward.  Stan’s hangover had been epic but the party was a blast.

Tonight, though, all they were doing was splurging at Friday’s on twelve-dollar margaritas and burgers.  They’re heading back home over the weekend, to South Park, and Stan was already expecting a war on two fronts: one between him and his mother and another, more nefarious: the long, bloody war between Kyle and Cartman.

Cartman, predictably, was enamored with Donald Trump.  

“Well, it’s over,” he said.  “Another one done.”

“Not done,” Kyle insisted.  He drained his margarita.  “I still have to go vote, you know.  At the convention.  And the election isn’t over, anyway.”

Stan groaned a little.  “I know, I know, six more months of this.”

“If Donald Trump is our fucking president in six months, Stanley, we’re moving to Sweden for four years.”  Kyle stabbed his fork at Stan, like he would somehow be implicit in the reign of Trump.  Stan could count on one hand the number of people he knew who were planning on caucusing for him and he certainly wasn’t in that camp.  

Stan gently pried the fork out of his hands.  “Kyle, no.  That’s ridiculous.”

Kyle took a deep breath.  “You’re right, I suppose.  He’ll get impeached in about four seconds.”

Stan laughed softly.  “That’s the spirit.”


	3. Debate Prep

**October 9, 2016**

It’s Sunday. They lay around in the morning, tumbling together in the sheets like teenagers, hushed laughter and lazy touches.  When the phone rings, Kyle sneaks out of bed, leaves Stan to his mid-morning nap and dresses to impress.  It’s the first proper weekend in October, and there’s doors to knock on, pamphlets to hand out, and votes to earn.

Stan wakes up in the early afternoon, blanket-warm and sighing, groping for Kyle but he isn’t there.  That’s okay, Stan thinks, as he wraps himself up in a comforter and hobbles to his feet.  The air conditioner is still rattling above the bed, God knows why, since it’s verging on seventy outside and far past the point where the air is needed.  

He would’ve gone with Kyle, he thinks, as he sets the coffee maker and stumbles towards the thermostat.  He point-blank refuses to campaign when the temperature drops under fifty-five, but the air is still warm enough for him to bring a real smile to his face.  He likes talking to people, loves sharing this passion.   _Help us,_  he says, and sometimes they listen.

Stan doesn’t even mind much when they slam the door in his face.  It makes Kyle laugh, and that makes him happy–a real kind of happy that bubbles up from somewhere in the pit of his stomach.  It’s like a game they play, one point for a slam, two for a swear, three for someone who spews vile shit in his face.  He didn’t expect it out of Boulder, but he supposes bigotry is everywhere, less hidden now than it once was under a thin veneer of propriety.

He hates Trump for this.  He _hates_  him, truly, and it almost bothers him to think it.

Kyle texts him while Stan sips his coffee.

 _25 points_ , it says.  Stan smiles.

~~

He makes chicken and mashed potatoes for dinner, places set and wine poured, ready when Kyle bounds in the door laughing softly.  Stan’s glad to see him happy.  He’s been on edge recently, worried and stiff.  Thirty days, exactly, mark the calendar.  Stan can’t wait for it to be over.  Maybe the shadow that’s fallen over the Marsh-Broflovski household will finally lift, or-

Well, he doesn’t like to think about the alternative.

The debate is tonight, a mad cap to an anniversary weekend that hasn’t quite felt real.  They were at dinner when the news broke about the tape, that orange asshole spewing obscenities, bragging about sexual assault like it was a badge of honor.  They spent most of the night in front of the television after that, curled up with a bag of chips and a couple beers.  

Stan wasn’t _surprised_.  He’s met douchebags like Trump before, knows them well.  It doesn’t shock him that he’s said the things he’s said, or done the things people are claiming.  It’s beautiful to watch a narcissist fall, though, floundering in a puddle of his own shit.

Kyle thinks of it like an anniversary present, a long sigh out after weeks of tensing up against polls that showed the worst.  He’s invested in this–Stan is, too, but not like Kyle.  Kyle wraps himself up in voter rolls and poll results, lives for policy and debate, knows Clinton’s positions by rote and knows the counter-punches, too; he’s a politician, Stan’s an idealist.

They both wanted Bernie.  The difference is that Stan is still a little sour, even now, sitting down to dinner months after the Democratic Convention, months after Kyle pivoted from a Sanders cheerleader to a full-throated Clinton supporter.

Stan  _likes_ her just fine.  Wishes she were a little more liberal.  Thinks maybe she isn’t as bad as people make her out to be.

“Are you still asleep?” Kyle teases.  He’s half way done with his meal, already on his second glass of wine, and Stan has just been picking.

“Just thinking,” Stan says.

“Well, stop.”  Kyle spears a chunk of chicken off Stan’s own plate and holds his fork up to Stan.  “Eat.  You’ll need it to balance out all the whiskey later.”

~~

They play a game.  Stan wonders if it’s the only way Kyle can get through these things without exploding.  Stan gets close himself a few times, wondering if the fucking man has lost his Goddamn mind.  The whiskey helps him at least.

Anderson Cooper helps, too, he supposes.

None of it feels real.  He starts to long for Mitt Romney, which is an interesting sort of position to find himself in.  Or John McCain.  Or even Sarah goddamn Palin, which isn’t a thing he ever thought he’d think.

They’re drunk by the time a too-wholesome Missourian asks the candidates to compliment each other, which should be impossible after eighty-eight minutes of dragging each other through the mud.

He doesn’t pay attention to the answers, because Kyle is heavy and warm against his side, sighing into his ear and rubbing his cheek against Stan’s hair.

“Hey,” Kyle says after a moment.

“Hey,” Stan says back.

“I’m going to run for the school board,” Kyle says, half-drunk and half-asleep.  “Next year.  Carl thinks it’s a good idea.”

“Me, too.”  

Stan means it.  Kyle’s built for that shit.  He thrives in it.  Loves it.  Wants to make the world a better place.  He wonders if there’s room for righteous idealism in politics, and then he remembers the fire lit under so many millions of people this spring, in the primary, and he knows there is.


	4. In The Beginning

It’s August and it’s too hot to be outside, but Randy has the radio on and he lets Stan drink beers with him out on the back porch, feet kicked up on the railing, letting what little breeze there is wash over them.  They’re both quiet, just the music and the faint sounds of traffic from the road back behind the trees filling the silence that’s as stifling as the heat between them.

Stan’s been glued to his phone in an antisocial kind of way all week.  This thing with Kyle is still so new, fragile, cherished.  He can’t stop himself from obsessing: Kyle is his now.  Maybe he always was, but the kissing is a nice change, one that Stan would loathe to have end abruptly if he doesn’t attend to his text messages.  Not that he thinks Kyle would dump him for something like that, but the whole thing is terrifying.

“Who’s the new girlfriend?” Randy asks.

“No girlfriend,” Stan mumbles.

“I know that look,” Randy teases.  “I’ve been there, buddy.  You don’t need to hide it from me.”

Stan rolls his eyes.  “No girlfriend,” he repeats.  He sucks in a breath, lets it out, and tells the truth: “Just Kyle.”

Randy lets out a sharp laugh, almost a bark.  “Keep up like that and people’ll think _he’s_  your girlfriend.”

Stan can taste the anxiety in the back of his throat, metallic and tangy, unpleasant.  He hates it.  For a moment, he hates Randy, too.  “I don’t care what people think,” he says.  “He’s my boyfriend, anyway.”

That’s the first time he’s said it out loud like that.  It feels good, even if it makes his stomach churn and his face hot and blotchy.  

The silence sits dead between them again.  YYZ is blaring out of the tinny speakers on Randy’s boom box.  Stan can barely breathe.  He looks up at Randy’s gape-mouthed stare.  He looks like a fish.  It would almost be funny if it wasn’t so awkward and horrifying.

“What?” Randy asks after what feels like a lifetime.

“He’s my boyfriend,” Stan repeats, stronger this time.  “We’re dating.”

Randy’s can of Pabst hits the deck and explodes in a volcano of foam.  Stan stays sat on his wobbly plastic chair while Randy slams back into the house without another word.  He’s holding back tears, though he isn’t sure why he thought it would go any other way.

 _I told my dad_ , Stan sends to Kyle.   _it didn’t go well._

 


	5. Election Day

It’s nine-thirty at night when the call finally comes from Becksworth.  Kyle doesn’t know what took the fucker so long to concede an election he was doomed to lose two weeks ago, but he’s still shaking when he hangs up the phone because that’s it, he did it, he _won_ , which makes absolutely no sense to him at all.  He felt like he was suffocating all day but now it’s over, done, and somehow he’s a Congressman.

He turns to Stan, who’s hovering over his shoulder.  Kyle feels like he’s been there all day, propping him up with kisses and encouraging words.  

“You did it,” Stan says.  There’s so much in his voice: pride, excitement, happiness, that sort of uneven wibble that came out when he was on the verge of tears and poorly holding them back.  

Kyle feels all those things, too, but his nerves are still frazzled.  He hasn’t slept in three days.  Now he’s got a room full of people he has to speak in front of, he’s got thanks to dole out and promises to make.  Mostly he wants to take five minutes to puke out the six shots of espresso that are souring his stomach.

“I’m terrified,” Kyle admits.

Stan kisses him firmly on the lips.  “Don’t be scared,” he says.  “We’ll figure this out.”

 


End file.
